The 2004 IIHF World Championship Organizing Committee together with the joint-stock company Sazka has decided to provide the ticket sale for the most important and followed sport event in the Czech Republic – 2004 IIHF World Championship - in three rounds.

The first one was done through the internet, started on December 22nd, 2003 and finished after three weeks, on January 11th, 2004 – seven days before the planned closing term.

The earlier end up of the internet sale was made because we wanted to give a chance to buy the tickets to people without the internet access. For those who prefer the classic form of ticket sale or considering the foreign fans the phone orders through the call centre (+420 266 121 122) of the joint-stock company Sazka we are starting the second round of ticket sale on Monday 26th, 2004 on more that 7000 Sazka company´s terminals.

The third round should start on March 15th, 2004 and will be accessible to the wide public.

But from the May 2003 – more than six months before the ticket sale really started – has the 2004 IIHF World Championship organizing committe received thousands of preliminary requests by e-mail.

The ammount has got over all the prognosis and expectations. It was clear very soon that we have underrated the hockey euphoria and fans interest was many times higher than the Sazka Arena and CEZ Arena capacity. Unfortunatelly there was no chance how to please most of the fans and the transfer of all the preliminary requests to the ticketing operator system would mean a big technical problem.

For us the most important fact was that all the attractive ticket could have been sold a long time before the real ticket sale started and there was no capacity left for the fans without the internet access.

That´s why we have decided to create the same rules for all the fans and treat all of them the same way. We have sent the list with the explanation of whole situation and the information how to enforce the order again to all the fans who sent the preliminary requests.

Despite all the efforts we realised that we were not able to please all the fans who would like to see the most attractive games of the 2004 IIHF World Championship in the country with so big ice-hockey base.

We are really sorry for that and we apologise to all the fans who were not pleased with the tickets.

But we have a positive news for all of them. A lot of attractive ticket packages which were reservated but not paid in a proper time will come to sale on Monday January 26th, 2004.

And on March 15th, 2004 the ticket sale third round will start. All the spare tickets from technical blocking and tickets blocked because of the universal commitments of the organisers will be detached for the third round of sale.

Untill the March 15th none of these tickets will be in the ticketing operator system and that´s why probably some of the games will be anounced as sold out. But on March 15th all the blocking will be detached and these ticket will come to sale.

We believe that all the hockey fans who would like to buy the tickets to the 2004 IIHF World Championship in Prague and Ostrava will succeed and boost the success of Czech national team and the whole championship, the most important sport event in the history of independent Czech republic.